., the poet
says: "The fruit of pilgrimage (to holy pools)--he whose hands, feet,
and mind are controlled;[49] he who has knowledge, asceticism, and
fame, he gets all the fruit that holy pools can give. If one is averse
from receiving gifts, content, freed from egoism, if one injures not,
and acts disinterestedly, if one is not gluttonous, or carnal-minded,
he is freed from sin. Let one (not bathe in pools but) be without
wrath, truthful, firm in his vows, seeing his self in all beings."
This is, however, a protest little heeded.[50] Pilgrimage is made to
pool and plain, to mountain, tree, and river. Even then, as now, of
all pilgrimages that to Ganges was most esteemed: "Originally all were
holy; in the second age Pushkara[51] was holy; in the third age the
Plain of the Kurus was holy; and in this age Ganges is holy" (III. 85.
90).[52] Besides Ganges, the Plain of the Kurus and Pray[=a]ga, the
junction of Ganges and Jumna, get the highest laudation. Other rivers,
such as the Gomal and Sarasvat[=i], are also extolled, and the list is
very long of places which to see or to bathe in releases from sin. "He
who bathes in Ganges purifies seven descendants.[53] As long as the
bones of a man touch Ganges-water so long that man is magnified in
heaven." Again: "No place of pilgrimage is better than Ganges; no god
is better than Vishnu; nothing is better than _brahma_--so said the
sire of the gods" (iii. 85. 94-96). The very dust of Kuru-Plain makes
one holy, the sight of it purifies; he that lives south of the
Sarasvat[=i], north of the Drishadvat[=i] (_i.e_., in Kuru-Plain), he
lives in the third heaven (iii. 83. 1-3=203-205[54]). This sort of
expiation for sin is implied in a more general way by the remark that
there are three kinds of purity, one of speech, one of act, and one of
water (iii. 200. 82). But in the epic there is still another means of
expiating sin, one that is indicated in the Brahmanic rule that if a
woman is an adulteress she destroys half her sin by confessing it (as
above), where, however, repentance is rather implied than commanded.
But in the epic Pur[=a]na it is distinctly stated as a Cruti, or trite
saying, that if one repents he is freed from his sin; _na tat
kury[=a]m punar_ is the formula he must use, 'I will not do so again,'
and then he is released from even the sin that he is going to commit a
second time, as if by a ceremony--so is the Cruti in the laws,
_dharmas_ (iii. 207. 51, 52).[55] Confessio